EU Heads of Customs Administrations agree on strengthening cooperation to protect the public

Under the Latvian Presidency of the Council of the European Union, the high-level seminar on customs matters took place on 7-8 May 2015 in Riga. The Heads of Customs Administrations of European Union (EU) Member States, experts in the customs control, representatives of the European Commission, Europol and the European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders exchanged views on main challenges and tasks in guaranteeing public security. At the end of the seminar the Riga Declaration on the Efficient Management of the External Border (Passenger Controls) was adopted.

The main task of the customs authorities is to ensure that passengers and commercial transport may cross the external border fast but at the same time an appropriate customs control of goods is carried out, guaranteeing the public protection and promoting the movement of goods. The access to the necessary data for risk management and timely evaluation of customs risks has a decisive role in completing this task in order to ensure the adequate control measures, where necessary.

The participants of the seminar emphasised that control at the external border is a common task of the EU. As there is no common model for cooperation to be implemented within a certain time frame, the representatives of the customs authorities pointed out the necessity to improve the cooperation at EU level with other agencies working at the external border and to ensure effective EU and national inter-institutional cooperation that should be mutually supportive, as well as to facilitate cooperation with third countries having borders with an EU country.

"The Latvian Customs Authority that provide a daily protection of the external border of the EU is aware of the significance of the new technologies as well as cooperation and information exchange with customs authorities and agencies involved in the external border controls of other countries in order to prevent that the EU external borders are crossed by persons or goods posing a risk to the public," said Ināra Pētersone, the Director-General of the State Revenue Service.

Riga Declaration on the Efficient Management of the External Border stresses that the inter-institutional cooperation at the external border should mainly focus on the risk management to guarantee the security and safety in general ensuring that the EU and its Member States can fully exploit the potential of such cooperation, to contribute to global security and ensure the compliance with regulatory requirements.

Declaration envisages the need to further strengthen cooperation in the field of information exchange and to achieve that the mutual cooperation models provide access to in-depth risk information to all authorities that are operating on the borders and are directly involved in carrying out specific controls, as well as to cooperate in planning and implementing joint operations, in use of the equipment and implementation of the training activities. The Declaration also indicates sthat operational coordination of activities at the external border needs to be strengthened, including jointly planning and conducting joint controls,where feasible, thus ensuring fully synchronized controls of goods and persons.

At the seminar active discussions were held on flight passengers’ registration data and availability of such data for risk analysis. Currently there is no regulatory basis at EU level for requesting such data. Nevertheless in response to the latest events in Europe, which require active involvement of customs authorities in the fight against terrorism and organized crime, the availability of detailed data is absolutely necessary for risk analysis. Access to data submitted before the actual border crossing would considerably improve the opportunities of customs authorities to perform a timely risk analysis and to pre-select for control the movement of high-risk goods, facilitating and accelerating the movement of low-risk goods that comply with all regulatory requirements.

As well as the need to supplement the list of indicators of measurement of the performance of Customs authorities with indicators that describes the effectiveness of controls of the external borders, including passenger control was discussed.

High-level seminar on customs matters is organised once every six month by the Presidency of the EU Council in collaboration with the European Commission.